June 8, 201115 yr Hi All!!! Finally parts have started arriving!!! Plan is to go for 14 drives, but some of the parts might look like an overkill due to the fact that i MUST go silent! After Raj's recommendation the PSU has been bought and arrived this week. It is the Corsair TX650 that will power up those 14 drives (some of them are 7200 rpm) and on Raj's words "use this if you don't want lots of sound) Now for the mobo, I have this idea for going for the ASROCK Mini-ITX A330ION http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157194 The reason for doing so, is that it will be almost silent since that little fan doesn't make much noise. I know that the graphics card is a bit of an overkill, but it has 4 SATA ports on the board and 2 eSATA that to my understanding can be added to the array through eSATA---> SATA cables. Would that statement be correct? Is anyone using the above mobo setup and does it work well for you? Shouldn't be much different consumption than using a Sempron with mATX board. Right? mobo also has 1 PCIe slot, which means expandability to 8 more SATAII ports taking the total to 14 drives. I trust it shouldn't be much of a problem. Correct? Any recommendations on silent cases that can accomodate a Mini-ITX board? Thanks in advance!!
June 8, 201115 yr ...if you plan to go up to 14 drives, the dimensions of the mobo are not the limiting factor, size-wise, aren't they? The smallest cases that will hold 14 drives will at least accept a micro-ATX sized mobo, I think. ...I'd opt for a Supermicro board, like the SM X7SPA-HF or its sucessors. I have several of these running...fanless and power efficient.
June 8, 201115 yr Author Supermicros are not available in Europe so the best choice I have is this ASROCK.
June 8, 201115 yr Supermicros are not available in Europe so the best choice I have is this ASROCK. ...Europe is a huge place to be. I am located in Europe and I did source mine from webshops around here: http://geizhals.at/eu/?cat=mbson&xf=544_Supermicro#xf_top There are also quite a few shops, specializing in servers & their components, that are not listed in the consumer products price portals, like: http://webshop.schneider-consulting.it/Intel-Atom or http://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/server-systems/server-tower/single-cpu/sc731i-silent-server-atom-d5100.html
June 8, 201115 yr Author Also a good choice seems to be this. Cheaper and seems to work well with Unraid! ASRock E350M1
June 8, 201115 yr Not to discourage you but I don't think there is such a thing as a "silent" 14 drive server. I'm hoping that your intent is to make it as quiet as possible because if you are after silence then I'm afraid that you are going to be disappointed, especially if you are going to use 7200 rpm drives. Also I'm not sure why you are limiting yourself to mITX boards because any case that can hold 14 3.5" HDDs will definitely be able to accomodate a mATX board and most likely a full sized ATX as well. You could try the ASUS E35M1-M PRO mATX board. I have this board in my HTPC. It will support up to 16 drives and it is passively cooled. You can also find quiet CPU coolers. The Scythe Big Shuriken is a popular choice for a quiet CPU cooler and it is compatable with just about any processor out there. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can pick just about any MB/CPU combo out there and still get relatively quiet operation. The only differences will be cost, performance, and power consumption. I have a Corsair 650TX in my server and can confirm that it is very quiet. Probably the most important selection is going to be the case. If you are after silence then you are going to want to minimize the number of fans in the server. The problem is that in order to get 14 drives into a case you are probably going to have to use 3 5-in-3 drive cages. That means you are going to have at least 3 fans in the case. My advice would be to build the server and see if the noise level is ok. If it is too high in the stock configuration then I would suggest that you replace the stock fans on the drive cages with PWM fans and use a fan speed control script to keep the fans as quiet as possible.
June 8, 201115 yr It is the Corsair TX650 that will power up those 14 drives (some of them are 7200 rpm) and on Raj's words "use this if you don't want lots of sound) If you want a really quiet psu, then the Seasonic X650 should be top of your list - the fan doesn't start to run until you exceed 20% load. Of course, to achieve that on an unRAID server, you'll already have several disk drives running. Another upside is that the Seasonic is 80+Gold (90% efficiency).
June 8, 201115 yr Not to discourage you but I don't think there is such a thing as a "silent" 14 drive server. I'm hoping that your intent is to make it as quiet as possible because if you are after silence then I'm afraid that you are going to be disappointed, especially if you are going to use 7200 rpm drives. This, of course, is true. However, you can aim for it to be silent until drives start spinning and, even with a couple of drives working, it can still be near inaudible. PWM fans and quiet psus aren't going to make a lot of noise until several drives are active, at which point the drive noise will probably be comparable with the noise from fans.
June 8, 201115 yr A mATX motherboard and a tower type cooler without a fan will be silent. No need for Atom or mITX boards to get a silent motherboard. I'm running an old 740G motherboard and BE2350 CPU with a Scythe Mini-Ninja cooler. That cooler without a fan works better than the stock AMD CPU cooler with the fan. You can get find all kinds of mATX motherboards with 6 SATA onboard and both a PCIe x16 and PCIe x1 slot, which means 6 SATA onboard + 8 SATA + 2 SATA using cards. Peter
June 8, 201115 yr I agree. if you're going `i4 drives, the nosie will not be a mobo unless you got an antique with a northbridge fan... Pic your case and PSU first. the Corsair will be pretty close to silent. the seasonic with be a little closer. once you have the Case, pick the other parts from there. almost any CPU,Mobo combo from the last 3 years will be virtually silent. Yes the supermicro mITX and an MV8 will be totally silent due to no fans and able to drive 14 drives... so would a few year old ausus board and dualcore with be about the same unless your head is inside the case. the newer boards/cpus are a bit more energy efficient and therefor cooler helping overall. the case fans will be the loudest part. trying to cool 14 drives is a chore. any yess there will be some hard drive chugging... I'd see if you can get a nexus edge in your location.
June 9, 201115 yr Author I ordered the ASROCK. What I mean when I say silent is that when all drives are spun down, the rig should be silent. To my understanding the PSU is near silent when PC is idling and I will be using silent fans on the case. Thanks for the advice but I believe I am making a good choice on a board that I can also use as HTPC if I decide to go bigger on the server. Question is: Should i go for unraid 4.7 or the latest beta? This will soon become my only storage solution in the house. Thanks!
June 9, 201115 yr I found that the most noisy were the 80mm fans from the drivecages if you want to go silent i would skip 5in3 drive bays and make a system were there is more space for drives and be able to cool them with a 120mm fan at low speed. I'd go for the latest stable release 4.7
June 14, 201115 yr Author I have trouble with receiving the MB so i am thinking of cancelling the order. Do you guys think that this is a good option? It is cheap, has 6 SATAIII on board and uses the Realtek 8111E NIC. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131732&cm_re=E35M1-I-_-13-131-732-_-Product Edit: The PCIe x16 slot works on x4 mode as it happens with all AMD boards. Would that be a problem for any Supermicro controller for adding 8 more SATA ports? Thanks!
June 14, 201115 yr I have trouble with receiving the MB so i am thinking of cancelling the order. Do you guys think that this is a good option? It is cheap, has 6 SATAIII on board and uses the Realtek 8111E NIC. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131732&cm_re=E35M1-I-_-13-131-732-_-Product It looks good .... but just be aware that more than one person has had trouble getting reliable operation of 8111e interfaces, particularly on Asus. Edit: The PCIe x16 slot works on x4 mode as it happens with all AMD boards. Would that be a problem for any Supermicro controller for adding 8 more SATA ports? Recent 8-port boards, with SATA 3 support, are specified for x8. However, this is probably a moot point, since no current drives can saturate a SATA3 link.
June 14, 201115 yr I have trouble with receiving the MB so i am thinking of cancelling the order. Do you guys think that this is a good option? It is cheap, has 6 SATAIII on board and uses the Realtek 8111E NIC. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131732&cm_re=E35M1-I-_-13-131-732-_-Product It looks good .... but just be aware that more than one person has had trouble getting reliable operation of 8111e interfaces, particularly on Asus. Edit: The PCIe x16 slot works on x4 mode as it happens with all AMD boards. Would that be a problem for any Supermicro controller for adding 8 more SATA ports? Recent 8-port boards, with SATA 3 support, are specified for x8. However, this is probably a moot point, since no current drives can saturate a SATA3 link. The 8-port 8x (or 4x) boards should work in a 4x (electrical) slot with no performance degradation using any rotational drives; SSD drives or port multipliers may have limited performance. I would avoid the 8111e.
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